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Anime and Manga
[After a Kaijin grows to the size of a building and takes off toward the city center]
Rapid Rabbit: You wouldn't happen to have a giant robot with you, would you?
Honey Trap: What's this about all of a sudden?
Rapid Rabbit: A hero's gotta have a giant robot for enemies like these...
Honey Trap: Well, I don't have one of those!
Rapid Rabbit: You wouldn't happen to have a giant robot with you, would you?
Honey Trap: What's this about all of a sudden?
Rapid Rabbit: A hero's gotta have a giant robot for enemies like these...
Honey Trap: Well, I don't have one of those!
Comic Books
"The size of those monster-robots staggers even my mind! They're carrying the Earth... As if it were a basketball!"
Fan Works
"Anyway," Hiccup thought. "We've got basically three options for this. Option one is that we just use our Looping experience and powers to hit Essence 10 straight off and punch problems until they no longer exist, and option two is basically that I get started building giant robots and never stop."
Baka felt his weapons and frontal armor melting under the terrific heat before his impact with the ground demonstrated why a flying multi-ton robot is a very bad idea.
Film — Live-Action
"Some things you can't fight. Acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you have to get out of the way. But when you're in a Jaeger, suddenly, you can fight the hurricane. You can win."
—Raleigh, Pacific Rim
"Gotta wonder, if God made us in his image... who made him?"
—Sergeant Epps, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
Podcasts
"Giant humanoid mechs aid in tasks civil, commercial, and military. And sometimes you look up to them and think 'We could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us.'"
—Austin Walker, COUNTER/Weight
Tabletop Games
These giant robots were once the pinnacle of military high-tech, and ruled the battlefields of Earth until someone realized what a dumb idea they were. After that, people tried to forget they ever used the things, and most were scrapped, the remainder finding employment as walking billboards.
—Crazed Creatures For Your Abusement, Macho Women with Guns
How like a God He is, that ancient Machine, primal of all His Kind, the Imperator! His mighty Fists, massive like two Towers of Destruction, laden with the Doom of Mankind's bitter Foes. He watches over us now as Battle joins, and in his Shadow we shall advance upon our Enemies and defeat them, utterly.
— Warhammer 40,000, on the Titans
Video Games
"Military traditionalists have repeatedly pointed out that the Assault Mechs are very poorly designed weapons - farcically bad, some have even said. They're extremely tall and are almost impossible to camouflage, making them easy targets. Their two-legged gait is more complicated, more expensive, more vulnerable and less efficient than are treaded wheels. And if one of the blasted things fall over, it can't get up again without the assistance of massive cranes or helicopters. Yank off the legs and mount the chassis on treads, the experts say, and you'll get a better weapon at lower cost.
All this is true. However, the units have one thing going for them that more than compensates for all of their weaknesses: they're massively, enormously cool. Military planners have long noted that national governments often confuse coolness with effectiveness and are willing to pay a lot more for flashy armaments than they are for effective but dull systems. In other words, a military with Mech Assault units has an easier time getting its bloated budget approved than does one without them. As long as this continues, the Mech's future is assured.
All this is true. However, the units have one thing going for them that more than compensates for all of their weaknesses: they're massively, enormously cool. Military planners have long noted that national governments often confuse coolness with effectiveness and are willing to pay a lot more for flashy armaments than they are for effective but dull systems. In other words, a military with Mech Assault units has an easier time getting its bloated budget approved than does one without them. As long as this continues, the Mech's future is assured.
— "Assault Mech" Civilopedia entry, Civilization IV "Nextwar" mod
Almost no one calls them Gunnery Deployment Rigs, because pop culture anticipated the rise of the bipedal combat platform for more than fifty years prior to the first operational deployment of a GDR, and has given them dozens of evocative names: Mechs, walkers, Giant Death Robots, and so forth. There is something psychologically affecting about seeing one stride across the landscape—reassuring for friendly forces, and terrifying for enemies. There is a certain purity to the GDR, a recapitulation of the human form, as well as an improvement on it.
— Giant Death Robot Civilopedia entry, Civilization VI
"Numidium was Tiber Septim's secret weapon in his bid for supreme power: a thousand foot tall automaton, a golem or an atronach of sorts powered by a gem called the Mantella. The Mantella was infused with the life force of Tiber Septim's Imperial Battlemage, and with it, Septim crushed all who stood in his way."
"If you ask me, it's got to be a joke. Not only is making a tank walk on two legs a technical nightmare, but there's no point in making a walking tank to begin with. Putting legs on a tank would raise its clearance, increasing its frontal projection area. It'd also be less stable. Suppose the legs help the tank travel bad roads... I don't see the logic in that. Isn't that what treads are for? I mean, anyone who'd seriously consider making a thing like that has got to be a wacko. Come to think of it, there was a guy in the States who wrote a paper on that subject. What was his name... Emerson? Heinrich? Something like that; I don't really remember. 'Course, no one took that seriously."
— Sigint on the titular Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
"Look, I gave it a try, I found it dreary and inscrutable, alright? Maybe I'm just not smart enough to get it like you. Why don't you sod off back to your little intellectual enclave and discuss the merits of Cartesian dualism...while I drive my neolithic brow over to the Epic Store and play a game about smashing toy robots together. I am NOT getting defensive, do you wanna fight?!"
Webcomics
"Please flee or be stepped on at your own expense."
Gundam: Truly you Super Robots are really absurd.
Grendizer: What? And what for?
Gundam: Come on! You never run out of ammo or power! You pull out swords from all over your body and you shoot massive disintegrator beams! You are unable to use a normal rifle! You shoot your fists! YOUR. FISTS! And then all those impossible transformations and your approximate design! It is hard to understand even how you can bend your joints! Giant monsters and horrible aliens! Endless fanservice! Incredible plot twists and collective laughter at sunset! Come on...! Hahahahahaha!
Grendizer: In short, you're envious...
Gundam: To die for!
Grendizer: What? And what for?
Gundam: Come on! You never run out of ammo or power! You pull out swords from all over your body and you shoot massive disintegrator beams! You are unable to use a normal rifle! You shoot your fists! YOUR. FISTS! And then all those impossible transformations and your approximate design! It is hard to understand even how you can bend your joints! Giant monsters and horrible aliens! Endless fanservice! Incredible plot twists and collective laughter at sunset! Come on...! Hahahahahaha!
Grendizer: In short, you're envious...
Gundam: To die for!
Western Animation
Train Engineer #1: Go ahead. Tell him what you saw, Frank.
Train Engineer #2: You're not gonna believe this, but it was a giant... metal... man!
Train Engineer #2: You're not gonna believe this, but it was a giant... metal... man!
Miscellaneous
There are reasons giant robots show up again and again in our fables and legends. One, they’re big enough that they don’t have to listen to what their mom tells them to do. Two, they let someone engage in physical combat even if that someone has incredibly soft hands and is sitting in a comfortable chair. End of list. That’s all they need, and don’t let anyone ever try to justify these things more to you – they make no sense physically, mechanically, or tactically. They are completely and solely a power fantasy treasured by children and underdeveloped men, and I love them so much.
One, they’re big enough that they don’t have to listen to what their mom tells them to do. Two, they let someone engage in physical combat even if that someone has incredibly soft hands and is sitting in a comfortable chair. End of list. That’s all they need, and don’t let anyone ever try to justify these things more to you – they make no sense physically, mechanically, or tactically. They are completely and solely a power fantasy treasured by children and underdeveloped men, and I love them so much.—Chris Bucholz on Robot Jox, 1900HotDog
"When the Protoss charge
And the Zerg start to swarm
I don't want no Zeus
I want my THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And the Zerg start to swarm
I don't want no Zeus
I want my THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!"
— Level 80 Elite Tauren Chief, Terran Up the Night
By 1975, Go Nagai had singlehandedly defined almost all of modern mecha's gimmicks: Piloted robotic vehicles, mecha whose command modules could serve as mini-vehicles, vehicles which combine to form a mech, and Mecha which could be "powered up" by add-on parts (Mazinger Z's Jet-Scrander backpack and Grendizer's UFO-like Spazer Booster). The only vital ingredient that Nagai didn't personally add to the mecha recipe was transformation; that honor belongs to 1975's Brave Raideen, which could shape-change into an avian God-Bird mode.
— Animerica magazine, "A History of Mecha Anime"
